Generational changes in workforce to be sweeping

Generational changes in the workforce have been around as long as aging workers have been replaced by younger employees.

But the shift that the American economy now faces is unprecedented both in its size and its potential effect on the way companies conduct business, says the keynote speaker at next month's Directions 2007 event in Reno.

Carolyn Martin, a principal of Rainmaker Thinking Inc., an Oregon company focused on generation diversity in the workplace, notes that numbers alone should give pause to managers.

Some 8,000 to 10,000 members of the Baby Boom generation turn 60 every single day.

As that mass of workers marches toward retirement, their successors bring dramatically different expectations to the workplace, Martin says.

"The world changed," she says. "The workplace changed."

Boomers, she explains, began their careers at a time ruled by old-school values. They assumed they could stay loyal to a single employer and steadily climb the corporate ladder to success.

The experience of Generation X workers, however, was starkly different.

They watched as hundreds of thousands of loyal, upwardly focused Baby Boomers lost their jobs in corporate reorganizations. Companies sought a more flexible sometimes almost freelance workforce.

"Generation X was the first generation to realize from the first day of their working lives that there is no such thing as job security," Martin says. "They learned that job security is within themselves."

And that, she says, affects almost everything about the ways that younger workers approach their careers everything from their definition of a work ethic to their views about the values of loyalty to an employer.

Martin has spent 20 years training organizations on recruiting and retaining workers of all ages and meeting their diverse needs.

Awareness of the issue, she says, is steadily rising among employers.

"People are having to get it," she says. "Some organizations latched onto a lot of it early on."

As keynoter for the Feb. 6 Directions 2007 event, she'll talk about ways that northern Nevada businesses can engage workers across the generational spectrum and blend their talents and viewpoints.

Other presentations during the 15th annual Directions event co-sponsored by the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada (EDAWN) and the Reno-Sparks Chamber of Commerce include discussion of the urban blueprints of northern Nevada cities and review of trends and the outlook for the region's market.

For ticket information, call 337-3044 or visit www.edawn.org/directions.